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Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Ending America’s Military Presence In Iraq

By Micah Zenko

Last
month, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was asked if the Iraqi government
would request that U.S. troops stay in country beyond the mutually-agreed upon
withdrawal date of December 31, 2011. Panetta replied: “My view is that they
finally did say, ‘Yes.’ ” Soon after, Ali al-Moussawi, adviser to Prime
Minister Nuri al-Maliki, corrected Panetta’s statement and affirmed that there
would be no discussion of extending U.S. troop presence in Iraq beyond year’s
end.

Throughout
the summer, U.S. military and civilian officials had hoped to keep 10,000
troops in Iraq for two reasons. First, the troops would prevent Iran from
supplying improvised explosive devices and rockets to Shia militants in Iraq who
have used such weapons to kill U.S. soldiers. However, as Lt. Gen. Mike Oates
(ret.) former commander of U.S. forces in southern Iraq, stated: “There have
been no reported incidents in which American forces have actually interdicted
Iranian munitions while in transit.” Thus, 10,000 troops would be assigned a
mission that 166,000 could never accomplish.

Second,
officials believed that maintaining 10,000 U.S. troops would mitigate Iran’s
long-term influence in Iraq. Here, the problem was that two brigades worth of
American combat power—living under severe host-nation operational
constraints—could notcounterbalance
Iran’s overwhelming strategic interest in its neighbor’s political makeup and
extensive use of combination of hard and soft-power initiatives.

Recently,
White House and Pentagon officials have revised and reduced their expectations,
and have proposed maintaining around 3,000 U.S. troops in Iraq beyond 2011, but
only for training security forces. (The Obama administration is also
considering keeping a small force in Kuwait on six month rotations, which would
reportedly “rotate into Iraq for limited periods, and return to Kuwait.”)

This
new reduced number is not tied to any strategic logic or rule-of-thumb for
troops required to train security forces. Rather, as the Washington Post
reported late last week: “The estimate of 3,000 to 5,000 troops reflects a
general consensus on what is politically feasible in Iraq and the United
States.”

Moreover,
as Brookings Institution analyst Kenneth Pollack pointed out yesterday, 3,000
troops would be unable to play any peacekeeping role, gather intelligence,
support reconstruction and development, or conduct unilateral counterterrorism
raids. In short, “a force that small will have a very hard time protecting itself,
let alone other American personnel in Iraq.”

Yesterday,
further complicating the matter, Senator Lindsey Graham of the Senate Armed
Services Committee stated that keeping 3,000 US troops in Iraq would be “one of
the biggest blunders in American foreign policy.” Graham added that, “No one
has suggested anything really from the Pentagon below 15 to 16,000.”

Amazingly,
just seventeen days before the State Department assumes full responsibility for
all U.S. government employees in Iraq, and 109 days before all U.S. forces are
required to be withdrawn, the United States and Iraq have not begun formal
discussions on the size or composition of a potential force.Back in April, Admiral Michael Mullen,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned, “Should the Iraqi government
desire to discuss the potential for some U.S. troops to stay…it needs to start
soon — very soon — should there be any chance of avoiding irrevocable logistics
and operational decisions we must make in the coming weeks.”

Weeks
have turned into months, and Washington and Baghdad are no closer to a joint
agreement of what U.S. military presence, if any, should remain in Iraq. Of
course, the United States has a strategic interest in supporting a stable and
democratic Iraq that can defend its sovereign territory and does not further
destabilize the region. As in other countries that the United States has a
strategic partnership with, this effort should be led by the State Department
in Washington and by the U.S. embassy’s Office of Security Cooperation in
Baghdad. Indefinitely sustaining America’s military presence in Iraq is not
required, nor has it been justified by any of the arguments put forward by the
Obama administration.

-This commentary was published on CFR.org on 13/09/2011
-Micah Zenko is Political scientist with expertise in national security issues.
Currently researching and writing on enhancing the capacity for preventive
action within international institutions, and on assessing deep cuts in U.S.
and Russian nuclear weapons

About Me

I graduated from the French University in Beirut (St Joseph) specialising in Political and Economic Sciences. I started my working life in 1973 as a reporter and journalist for the pan-Arab magazine “Al-Hawadess” in Lebanon later becoming its Washington, D.C. correspondent. I subsequently moved to London in 1979 joining “Al-Majallah” magazine as its Deputy Managing Editor. In 1984 joined “Assayad” magazine in London initially as its Managing Editor and later as Editor-in-Chief. Following this, in 1990 I joined “Al-Wasat” magazine (part of the Dar-Al-Hayat Group) in London as a Managing Editor. In 2011 I became the Editor-In-Chief of Miraat el-Khaleej (Gulf Mirror). In July 2012 I became the Chairman of The Board of Asswak Al-Arab Publishing Ltd in UK and the Editor In Chief of its first Publication "Asswak Al-Arab" Magazine (Arab Markets Magazine) (www.asswak-alarab.com).

I have already authored five books. The first “The Tears of the Horizon” is a love story. The second “The Winter of Discontent in The Gulf” (1991) focuses on the first Gulf war sparked by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. His third book is entitled “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: From Balfour Promise to Bush Declaration: The Complications and the Road to a Lasting Peace” (March 2008). The fourth book is titled “How Iran Plans to Fight America and Dominate the Middle East” (October 2008) And the fifth and the most recent is titled "JIHAD'S NEW HEARTLANDS: Why The West Has Failed To Contain Islamic Fundamentalism" (May 2011).

Furthermore, I wrote the memoirs of national security advisor to US President Ronald Reagan, Mr Robert McFarlane, serializing them in “Al-Wasat” magazine over 14 episodes in 1992.

Over the years, I have interviewed and met several world leaders such as American President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Margaret Thacher, Late King Hassan II of Morocco, Late King Hussein of Jordan,Tunisian President Zein El-Abedine Bin Ali, Lybian Leader Moammar Al-Quadhafi,President Amine Gemayel of Lebanon,late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, Late Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat, Haitian President Jean Claude Duvalier, Late United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan,Algerian President Shazli Bin Jdid, Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Siyagha and more...